29

On the Battlements

THE
sculptor
now looked through an embrasure, and
threw down a bit of lime, watching its fall, till
it struck upon a stone bench at the rocky
foundation of the tower, and flew into many
fragments.

"Pray pardon
me for helping Time to crumble away
your ancestral walls " said he. "But I am one of
those persons who have a natural tendency to climb
heights, and to stand on the verge of them,
measuring the depth below. If I were to do just
as I like, at this moment, I should fling myself
down after that bit of lime. It is a very
singular temptation, and all but irresistible;
partly, I believe, because it might be so easily
done, and partly because such momentous
consequences would ensue, without my being
compelled to wait a moment for them. Have you
never felt this strange impulse of an evil spirit
at your back, shoving you towards a precipice?"

"Ah, no!"
cried Donatello, shrinking from the
battlemented wall with a face of horror. "I cling
to life in a way which you cannot conceive; it has
been so rich, so warm, so sunny! and beyond its
verge, nothing but the chilly dark! And then a
fall from a precipice is such an awful death!"

"Nay; if
it be a great height," said Kenyon, "a
man would leave his life in the air, and never
feel the hard shock at the bottom."

"That is
not the way with this kind of death!"
exclaimed Donatello, in a low, horror-stricken
voice, which grew higher and more full of emotion
as he proceeded. "Imagine a
fellow-creature--breathing, now, and looking you
in the face--and now tumbling down, down, down,
with a long shriek wavering after him, all the
way! He does not leave his life in the air! No;
but it keeps in him till he thumps against the
stones, a horribly long while; then he lies there
frightfully quiet, a dead heap of bruised flesh
and broken bones! A quiver runs through the
crushed mass, and no more movement after that!
No, not if you would give your soul to make him
stir a finger! Ah, terrible! Yes, yes; I would
fain fling myself down for the very dread of it,
that I might endure it once for all, and dream of
it no more!"

"How forcibly,
how frightfully you conceive this!"
said the sculptor, aghast at the passionate horror
which was betrayed in the Count's words, and
still-more in his wild gestures and ghastly look.
"Nay, if the height of your tower affects your
imagination thus, you do wrong to trust yourself
here in solitude, and in the nighttime, and at all
unguarded hours. You are not safe in your
chamber. It is but a step or two, and what if a
vivid dream should lead you up hither, at
midnight, and act itself out as a reality!"

Donatello had
hidden his face in his hands, and
was leaning against the parapet.

"No fear
of that!" said he. "Whatever the dream
may be, I am too genuine a coward to act out my
own death in it."

The paroxysm
passed away, and the two friends
continued their desultory talk, very much as if no
such interruption had occurred. Nevertheless, it
affected the sculptor with infinite pity to see
this young man, who had been born to gladness as
an assured heritage, now involved in a misty
bewilderment of grievous thoughts, amid which he
seemed to go staggering blindfold. Kenyon, not
without an unshaped suspicion of the definite
fact, knew that his condition must have resulted
from the weight and gloom of life, now first
through the agency of a secret trouble, making
themselves felt on a character that had heretofore
breathed only an atmosphere of joy. The effect of
this hard lesson, upon Donatello's intellect and
disposition, was very striking. It was
perceptible that he had already had glimpses of
strange and subtle matters in those dark caverns,
into which all men must descend, if they would
know anything beneath the surface and illusive
pleasures of existence. And when they emerge,
though dazzled and blinded by the first glare of
daylight, they take truer and sadder views of life
forever afterwards.

From some
mysterious source, as the sculptor felt
assured, a soul had been inspired into the young
Count's simplicity, since their intercourse in
Rome. He now showed a far deeper sense, and an
intelligence that began to deal with high
subjects, though in a feeble and childish way. He
evinced, too, a more definite and nobler
individuality, but developed out of grief and
pain, and fearfully conscious of the pangs that
had given it birth. Every human life, if it
ascends to truth or delves down to reality, must
undergo a similar change; but sometimes, perhaps,
the instruction comes without the sorrow; and
oftener the sorrow teaches no lesson that abides
with us. In Donatello's case, it was pitiful, and
almost ludicrous, to observe the confused struggle
that he made; how completely he was taken by
surprise; how ill-prepared he stood, on this old
battlefield of the world, to fight with such an
inevitable foe as mortal calamity, and sin for its
stronger ally.

"And yet,"
thought Kenyon, "the poor fellow bears
himself like a hero, too! If he would only tell
me his trouble, or give me an openmg to speak
frankly about it, I might help him, but he finds
it too horrible to be uttered, and fancies himself
the only mortal that ever felt the anguish of
remorse. Yes; he believes that nobody ever
endured his agony before; so that--sharp enough in
itself--it has all the additional zest of a
torture just invented to plague him individually."

The sculptor
endeavored to dismiss the painful
subject from his mind; and, leaning against the
battlements, he turned his face southward and
westward, and gazed across the breadth of the
valley. His thoughts flew far beyond even those
wide boundaries, taking an air-line from
Donatello's tower to another turret that ascended
into the sky of the summer afternoon, invisibly to
him, above the roofs of distant Rome. Then rose
tumultuously into his consciousness that strong
love for Hilda, which it was his habit to confine
in one of the heart's inner chambers, because he
had found no encouragement to bring it forward.
But now, he felt a strange pull at his
heartstrings. It could not have been more
perceptible, if all the way between these
battlements and Hilda's dovecote had stretched an
exquisitely sensitive cord, which, at the hither
end, was knotted with his aforesaid heartstrings,
and, at the remoter one, was grasped by a gentle
hand. His breath grew tremulous. He put his hand
to his breast; so distinctly did he seem to feel
that cord drawn once, and again, and again, as
if--though still it was bashfully intimated--there
were an importunate demand for his presence. Oh,
for the white wings of Hilda's doves, that he
might have flown thither, and alighted at the
Virgin's shrine!

But lovers,
and Kenyon knew it well, project so
lifelike a copy of their mistresses out of their
own imaginations, that it can pull at the
heartstrings almost as perceptibly as the genuine
original. No airy intimations are to be trusted;
no evidences of responsive affection less positive
than whispered and broken words, or tender
pressures of the hand, allowed and half returned;
or glances that distill many passionate avowals
into one gleam of richly colored light. Even
these should be weighed rigorously, at the
instant, for, in another instant, the imagination
seizes on them as its property, and stamps them
with its own arbitrary value. But Hilda's
maidenly reserve had given her lover no such
tokens, to be interpreted either by his hopes or
fears.

"Yonder, over
mountain and valley, lies Rome,"
said the sculptor; "shall you return thither in
the autumn?"

"All, to
the best of my belief," said the
sculptor, "but you need not go to Rome to seek
them. If there were one of those friends whose
lifetime was twisted with your own I am enough of
a fatalist to feel assured that you will meet that
one again, wander whither you may. Neither can we
escape the companions whom Providence assigns for
us by climbing an old tower like this."

"Yet the
stairs are steep and dark," rejoined the
Count; "none but yourself would seek me here, or
find me, if they sought."

As Donatello
did not take advantage of this
opening which his friend had kindly afforded him
to pour out his hidden troubles, the latter again
threw aside the subject, and returned to the
enjoyment of the scene before him. The
thunderstorm, which he had beheld striding across
the valley, had passed to the left of Monte Beni,
and was continuing its march towards the hills
that formed the boundary on the eastward. Above
the whole valley, indeed, the sky was heavy with
tumbling vapors, interspersed with which were
tracts of blue, vividly brightened by the sun;
but, in the east, where the tempest was yet
trailing its ragged skirts, lay a dusky region of
cloud and sullen mist, in which some of the hills
appeared of a dark-purple hue. Others became so
indistinct, that the spectator could not tell
rocky height from impalpable cloud. Far into this
misty cloud region, however within the domain of
chaos, as it were--hilltops were seen brightening
in the sunshine; they looked like fragments of the
world, broken adrift and based on nothingness, or
like portions of a sphere destined to exist, but
not yet finally compacted.

The sculptor,
habitually drawing many of the
images and illustrations of his thoughts from the
plastic art, fancied that the scene represented
the process of the Creator, when he held the new,
imperfect earth in his hand, and modelled it.

"What a
magic is in mist and vapor among the
mountains!" he exclaimed. "With their help, one
single scene becomes a thousand. The cloud
scenery gives such variety to a hilly landscape
that it would be worth while to journalize its
aspect from hour to hour. A cloud, however--as I
have myself experienced--is apt to grow solid and
as heavy as a stone the instant that you take in
hand to describe it. But in my own heart, I have
found great use in clouds. Such silvery ones as
those to the northward, for example, have often
suggested sculpturesque groups, figures, and
attitudes; they are especially rich in attitudes
of living repose, which a sculptor only hits upon
by the rarest good fortune. When I go back to my
dear native land, the clouds along the horizon
will be my only gallery of art!"

"I can
see cloud shapes, too," said Donatello;
"yonder is one that shifts strangely; it has been
like people whom I knew. And now, if I watch it a
little longer, it will take the figure of a monk
reclining, with his cowl about his head and drawn
partly over his face, and--well! did I not tell
you?"

"I think,"
remarked Kenyon, "we can hardly be
gazing at the same cloud. What I behold is a
reclining figure, to be sure, but feminine, and
with a despondent air, wonderfully well expressed
in the wavering outline from head to foot. It
moves my very heart by something indefinable that
it suggests."

"I see
the figure, and almost the face," said the
Count; adding, in a lower voice, "It is Miriam's!"

While the
two gazers thus found their own
reminiscences and presentiments floating among the
clouds, the day drew to its close, and now showed
them the fair spectacle of an Italian sunset. The
sky was soft and bright, but not so gorgeous as
Kenyon had seen it, a thousand times, in America;
for there the western sky is wont to be set aflame
with breadths and depths of color with which poets
seek in vain to dye their verses, and which
painters never dare to copy. As beheld from the
tower of Monte Beni, the scene was tenderly
magnificent, with mild gradations of hue, and a
lavish outpouring of gold, but rather such gold as
we see on the leaf of a bright flower than the
burnished glow of metal from the mine. Or, if
metallic, it looked airy and unsubstantial, like
the glorified dreams of an alchemist. And
speedily--more speedily than in our own
clime--came the twilight, and, brightening through
its gray transparency, the stars.

A swarm
of minute insects that had been hovering
all day around the battlements were now swept away
by the freshness of a rising breeze. The two owls
in the chamber beneath Donatello's uttered their
soft melancholy cry--which, with national
avoidance of harsh sounds, Italian owls substitute
for the hoot of their kindred in other
countries--and flew darkling forth among the
shrubbery. A convent bell rang out near at hand,
and was not only echoed among the hills, but
answered by another bell, and still another, which
doubtless had farther and farther responses, at
various distances along the valley; for, like the
English drumbeat around the globe, there is a
chain of convent bells from end to end, and
crosswise, and in all possible directions over
priest-ridden Italy.

"Come," said
the sculptor, "the evening air grows
cool. It is time to descend."

"Time for
you, my friend," replied the Count; and
he hesitated a little before adding, "I must keep
a vigil here for some hours longer. It is my
frequent custom to keep vigils; and sometimes the
thought occurs to me whether it were not better to
keep them in yonder convent, the bell of which
just now seemed to summon me. Should I do wisely,
do you think, to exchange this old tower for a
cell?"

"True," said
Donatello, sighing. "Therefore, if
at all, I purpose doing it."

"Then think
of it no more, for Heaven's sake!"
cried the sculptor. "There are a thousand better
and more poignant methods of being miserable than
that, if to be miserable is what you wish. Nay; I
question whether a monk keeps himself up to the
intellectual and spiritual height which misery
implies. A monk--I judge from their sensual
physiognomies, which meet me at every turn--is
inevitably a beast! Their souls, if they have any
to begin with, perish out of them, before their
sluggish, swinish existence is half done. Better,
a million times, to stand stargazing on these airy
battlements, than to smother your new germ of a
higher life in a monkish cell!"

"You make
me tremble," said Donatello, "by your
bold aspersion of men who have devoted
themselves to God's service!"

"They serve
neither God nor man, and themselves
least of all, though their motives be utterly
selfish," replied Kenyon. "Avoid the convent, my
dear friend, as you would shun the death of the
soul! But, for my own part, if I had an
insupportable burden--if, for any cause, I were
bent upon sacrificing every earthly hope as a
peace-offering towards Heaven--I would make the
wide world my cell, and good deeds to mankind my
prayer. Many penitent men have done this, and
found peace in it."

Yet his
face brightened beneath the stars; and,
looking at it through the twilight, the sculptor's
remembrance went back to that scene in the
Capitol, where, both in features and expression,
Donatello had seemed identical with the Faun.
And still there was a resemblance; for now, when
first the idea was suggested of living for the
welfare of his fellow-creatures, the original
beauty, which sorrow had partly effaced, came back
elevated and spiritualized. In the black depths,
the Faun had found a soul, and was struggling with
it towards the light of Heaven.

The illumination,
it is true, soon faded out of
Donatello's face. The idea of lifelong and
unselfish effort was too high to be received by
him with more than a momentary comprehension. An
Italian, indeed, seldom dreams of being
philanthropic, except in bestowing alms among the
paupers, who appeal to his beneficence at every
step, nor does it occur to him that there are
fitter modes of propitiating Heaven than by
penances, pilgrimages, and offerings at shrines.
Perhaps too, their system has its share of moral
advantages; they, at all events, cannot well pride
themselves, as our own more energetic benevolence
is apt to do, upon sharing in the counsels of
Providence and kindly helping out its otherwise
impracticable designs.

And now
the broad valley twinkled with lights,
that glimmered through its duskiness, like the
fireflies in the garden of a Florentine palace. A
gleam of lightning from the rear of the tempest
showed the circumference of hills, and the great
space between, as the last cannon flash of a
retreating army reddens across the field where it
has fought. The sculptor was on the point of
descending the turret stair, when, somewhere in
the darkness that lay beneath them, a woman's
voice was heard, singing a low, sad strain.

The song,
if song it could be called, that had
only a wild rhythm, and flowed forth in the fitful
measure of a wind harp, did not clothe itself in
the sharp brilliancy of the Italian tongue. The
words, so far as they could be distinguished, were
German, and therefore unintelligible to the Count,
and hardly less so to the sculptor; being softened
and molten, as it were, into the melancholy
richness of the voice that sung them. It was as
the murmur of a soul bewildered amid the sinful
gloom of earth, and retaining only enough memory
of a better state to make sad music of the wail,
which would else have been a despairing shriek.
Never was there profounder pathos than breathed
through that mysterious voice; it brought the
tears into the sculptor's eyes, with remembrances
and forebodings of whatever sorrow he had felt or
apprehended; it made Donatello sob, as chiming in
with the anguish that he found unutterable, and
giving it the expression which he vaguely sought.

But, when
the emotion was at its profoundest
depth, the voice rose out of it, yet so gradually
that a gloom seemed to pervade it, far upward from
the abyss, and not entirely to fall away as it
ascended into a higher and purer region. At last,
the auditors would have fancied that the melody,
with its rich sweetness all there, and much of its
sorrow gone, was floating around the very summit
of the tower.

"Donatello," said
the sculptor, when there was
silence again "had that voice no message for your
ear?"

"I dare
not receive it," said Donatello; "the
anguish of which it spoke abides with me: the hope
dies away with the breath that brought it hither.
It is not good for me to hear that voice."

The sculptor
sighed, and left the poor penitent
keeping his vigil on the tower.